University of California Stands Out Among Top Schools When It Comes to Serving Poor Students

On May 1, 2018, The Atlantic published an article, “The University of California Stands Out Among Top Schools When It Comes to Serving Poor Students.” Here’s an excerpt:

Schools in the University of California system are doing significantly better than other four-year colleges and universities in the country when it comes to enrolling low-income students and seeing them across the finish line. Of the public and private nonprofit schools with a higher-than-average Pell-awardee enrollment rate (the schools this study examined), the UCs occupy five of the top 10 slots in terms of graduating students. Among only public institutions, they are the top seven.

“Every single time we do these outcome measures, the UC system stands out,” Lanae Erickson Hatalsky, who leads the social policy and politics program at Third Way, told me. A 2016 report from Third Way on outcomes for students at public colleges similarly found that colleges in the UC system fared better than their peers.

Why is that? The state money available for higher education makes a big difference—and the UCs have remained among the better-funded colleges in the country, as institutions in other states have seen sharp cuts. They devote a good portion of that funding to getting low-income students onto campus in the first place. In recent years, colleges have placed increased emphasis on outreach to low-income communities to diversify the socioeconomic makeup of their student body, including sending recruiters to schools they haven’t traditionally frequented and helping with college counseling.